大象传媒

(As told to a class of secondary school pupils). I was four years old when, after the Dunkirk rescue in May 1940, it was decided that all children should be evacuated from East Kent, because it was expected that the Germans would invade the British Isles, including that area - I lived in Margate. My father was in the army and had just arrived from Dunkirk.

My sister Bettie was 11 and due to go with the rest of her school and, after much agonising, my mother decided that I should go with her. This was a terrible decision for my mother to make - she even asked me which I would prefer: to stay with her or to go with Bettie. I thought bettie needed me more (') and that I should go with her - what a responsibility for the poor girl. (After we had departed, my mother went to live in Birmingham, to be near us, and did munitions work in the Lucas factory. She visited us every 3-4 weeks and we went to her every now and then. I remember the streets of bombed houses near where she lived.)

It was some time in June. I vaguely remember the train journey and arriving when the shadows were lengthening. We were in a small town, Rugeley, in Staffordshire, about 23 miles north of Birmingham. We were taken from the train to a nearby junior school in Talbot Street where it would be decided who would become our 'foster' parents. This sytem was called billeting and the house where we lived was called a billet. Bettie and I started with a Mr and Mrs Bentley, who lived in the caretaker's house next to a school with a field next door. They agreed that Bettie's best friend should come with us. We were happy there until the best friend's parents came to visit and suggested that they, or one of them, shoudld move in with their daughter and that Bettie and I should be moved. Unfortunately, this suggestion was agreed to and we were duly moved. (My father never forgave these people for this.)

From then on we moved to other billts, mostly not very nice ones, where we were not very well treated and where gifts from our mother were stolen. When my mother discovered this, she had us moved, and we eventually went to a middle-aged couple (Mr and Mrs Richards) who were very kind indeed. However, when Bettie was 12 or 13 she was sent to live with my mother's sister and her family in Bexleyheath where she went to the local school until she left at the age of 14. I remained in Rugeley with the Richards until 1945 after the war in Europe was over.

Life was difficult for the people who took on evacuees, especially those who had no experience of children. Food was rationed and although there was enough, it had to be eked our with whatever supplementary items that could be found. We some times ate dandelion leaves as salad and possibly boiled nettle leaves. There was roast meat on Sunday and cold gristly leftovers on Monday (which was always washing day), with boiled floury potatoes. There would also have been Yorkshire pudding. Not butter but margarine. Milk was delivered on a float drawn by a horse and driven by a Land Girl who measured the milk into your jug from a churn. Mrs Richards always managed to keep us fed. Almost everything was rationed - we had books of coupons for food and clothing especially. People had to hang blackout curtains so that no light could be seen by overflying enemy aircraft. If any of you have seen Dad's Army on TV, you will know about this. A lady came round with a barrow on which she sharpened knives and scissors for ninepence.

Mr Richards, too old for military service, was a clerk at the local colliery. They had married late in life and were childless. Mrs Richards was intelligent and I am sure I benefited from her care. She encouraged me to collect and press wild flowers - I had over 100 by the time I returned home. Bettie and I shared a double bedstead with brass knobs. There was gas lighting and no bathroom. We went across a communal yard to a modern flush lavatory and were bathed in a big zinc bath in front of the fire, which was in the centre of a cooking range which had to be regularly black-leaded. Coal was kept in a bunker. At Christmas I put my letter to Father Christmas on a ledge inside the chimney. The front step had to be whitened every week. The front room was cold and rarely used and had an aspidistra plant. The stairs went up through the centre of the house. The scullery at the back had a large brick built-in copper and a dolly-peg was used to pound the washing to make it clean, and a bluebag was used to make the bedlinen really white. After mangling, the washing weas hung in the communal yard.

Rugeley then was quite small and we could get to the countryside very easily. There was a canal nearby, with wild iris (flags), meadowsweet and masses of other water plants along the banks, which at one point went over the River Trent (forming an aqueduct). The were the 'mossy fields' (now buried under several cooling towers), the common lanes where there were harebells, fly agaric toadstools, bilberries, birch and conifer trees and all the things you would find on a heath near Cannock Chase. There was a RAF camp a few miles away, also camps for German and Italian prisoners of war. Later in the war Americans arrived and some were stationed in the area. Along the canal was a village called Armitage where there was always a swan's nest with cygnets every year. My sister worked during holidays and weekends at Ridouts farm where she learned to milk cows. We also visited Etchinghill where one could see miles and miles. A place that scared me was a very long canal tunnel where part of the path had fallen away and one had to jump over it, risking falling int othe canal. Life was very simple. Very few had cars; we went everywhere on foot or by bus or train. The engines frightened me, standing in the staion steaming when I had to cross the line to catch the train to stay with my mother. Sants Brook was lovely - we had to negotiate large cow pats to get there. We used to gather sheeps' wool from the hedges and fences - we never found a use for it and it was burned in the fire under the copper - what a stink'

Rugeley is old and has an unusual covered market hall where we used to attend Christmas parties. The graveyard has the grave of very tall twins. Palmer the Poisoner lived there - a doctor who killed not only his children, but several of his patients for their money. There are streets called Hornfare and Sheepfare. I visited Stafford, Lichfield and Abbots Bromley (where a horn dance is still performed). At Breteon there was a huge cedar tree and a pub with a bar for men only. We listened to the radio for information and entertainment.

We were generally healthy, as long as we were looked after properly. With few sweet things and lots of walking we were fit and slim. We had cod liver oil with malt every day. All our teachers were kind (only the infants school headmistress was frightening) and the curriculum was simpler. The only downside was the rather primitive outside loos, and frozen milk, which was warmed up on the heating pipies which made it quite revolting - it was years before I could drink it again. When the work went round that Woolworths had ice-cream, we all converged on the shop for a wafer costing tuppence halfpenny.

We were lucky that only one bomb dropped near Rugeley. I remember the sirens. When victory came there was a parade through the town. I had a good seat on top of the brick pillar at the foot of the station approach. The sound of drums made me cry - they still have that effect on me. By this time, my father had been badly wounded (two months after D-Day) and was in hospital, where he returned for operations until 1948. This delayed our return home. My sister had lived with my mother in Birmingham since leaving school, working as a secretary. They went home first to open up the house and when my father was on leave from hospital. On 26 July 1945, Mr and Mrs Richards brought me home to Margate and stayed for a holiday. They were upset at saying good bye - I have forgotten what my feelings were, probably being preoccupied with my new life and fascinated at seeing the home I had forgotten, finding old toys which had been packed away, getting used to my father again, whom I had seen only a few times during the war, when we went to North Wales for holidays. Miraculously, the house had sustained only some roof damage, which had been repaired. There were front and back gardens and the seaside to explore.

I was mainly lucky with my experience, as were most children, but some suffered exploitation and ill-treatment.

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